Student Experiences of the Leaving Certificate Applied Programme

WORK EXPERIENCE IN THE LEAVING CERTIFICATE APPLIED 103Graham had always the intention of pursuing a trade rather thanpursuing further education and was encouraged by his career guidanceteacher to pursue employment in something else before committing to anapprenticeship:So what kind of advice did the career guidance teacher giveyou?She just said don’t just go into a trade, you know what I mean, go out, work fora couple of weeks at something else and that’s what I did, I attended a brickiesfor six months before I started my trade, just to see if I was fully sure I wanted todo it like. It gave me all the information about apprenticeships which I wanted todo like and it let me [do] field trips and let me experience the work place.(Graham, 22, completed LCA, apprentice)Most of the respondents we spoke to highlighted the need for moreeffective career guidance for LCA students. A number of respondentsoutlined how they had little knowledge of the transferability of an LCAqualification into the system of further education. Ronan felt that he had avery good career guidance teacher who helped guide him through the workexperience and the whole career decision making process:They [the teachers] talk to you about what you want to do after school, so theykind of, steer you towards which subjects you should pick. The Career GuidanceTeacher, she basically just read my reports from the work experience, she said theywere very good, I still really didn’t know what I wanted to do, so she kind ofguided me in that way. You know, she encouraged me, kind of maybe gave me alittle praise and I think that does help as well. She gave me a list of colleges, youknow, and she pointed me to the one I went to, you know, she said this probablyis one of the best ones, it will suit you to go and it was good, it was a good collegelike. (Ronan, 25, completed LCA, apprentice)However, despite the guidance he received at school, like many otherLCA students we interviewed, Ronan found out towards the end of theLCA programme that he may have difficulty in getting the course that hewanted because of the points needed to enter the course:Were you aware that you weren’t going to be able to go?No.And when did you find that out?Basically, I just found it out in sixth year you know, you only find out when youstart looking for colleges to go to, then you realise the marks you need for this andthat and what college takes people from LCA, because there is some colleges thatdon’t, there’s probably a lot of college that don’t take the LCA. And then youkind of look at yourself and say why! It’s unfair, it’s kind of discriminating alittle bit, because you still do the same work basically. (Ronan, 25, completedLCA, apprentice)This was also the case for Aoibhinn who found out too late that a passLCA would not be enough to allow entry into a childcare course that shewanted to pursue: